Some time soon, The Gap Bike Shop will be doing a little northshore and trials demonstration at a local school fete. We’ll have about 5-10 guys on bikes doing the northshore stuff, hopeflly one awsome bike trials guy, and Gary and I on unicycles (and maybe more). I just found out that we’ll have heaps of equipment to use for the northshore bit and I’ve decided to start planning a little course.
We’ll have:
Heaps of long sleepers (about 4m long)
3 normal sized sleepers (about 2.5m long)
Several different sized things to rest the sleepers on
3 cable spools
Quite a few strong hardwood narrow planks (about 3" wide and 2.5m long)
Maybe a see-saw
Heaps of shorter narrow planks
So what can we do with them? Any ideas? We’ll have an area of probably about 30m x 30m but that’s just a guess.
This’ll be a huge improvement on last year’s setup (in the photo I’ve attached). I had a ball then…this year’ll be unbelievable!
Andrew. Sounds to me is good enough size I recommend at 30m x 30m but slightly more if you and Gary can increase it a bit. As you said It just a guess. The see-saw sounds Marvellous to me and I think it should be included. And as your rest of the list has mention, Should work and don’t dump those 3 Cable Spools you saved. That should be included. Sorry I can’t make it as I’m full up in arms with work with Paper delivering at the moment. I may quit that in 3 months time due to computer building. Goodluck Andrew and pass that on to Gary on my behalf.
I’ve had a little fiddle around with different combinations and I’ve come up with this (see attached photo) …
The section on the right will be best suited for the unicyclists but the other bike guys can try it too. I think the trials guy will be able to do it easily. All the planks are about 7cm wide. It starts on ground level and only goes up to about 40cm. The planks will be fastened on tightly so the bike guys can try to hop and swing their back wheels around. The little 40cm gap should be lots of fun because it’s got a landing that’s only 7cm wide.
The big middle section should be lots of fun with all the different paths and heights and widths. The two plank widths are 20cm and 7cm for this section. The first two supports are those normal sized ones that builders rest planks of wood on when they’re cutting them and so on (about 80cm high maybe). Then if you go to the right, you go up higher (I’m not sure how high they are) on the wider bit and ride along a 7cm wide narrow bit after it’s flattened out. From there it splits into a wider level (high) bit with a drop that’ll probably be between 1m and 1.5m depending on the height of the supports, or a narrow decline with an 80cm drop at the end. I made this bit go down because I was thinking that it’d be hard for the bike guys to do a bigger drop from a narrow plank. If you go left at the first fork, you go level on a narrow plank which runs onto a drop onto a 40cm high wider plank, and you end up on the sliding see-saw. For those of you who haven’t read about my sliding see-saws, you roll along to near the end, hit the brakes or in our case stop pedalling, slide along for maybe 1.5m, and once you pass the fulcrum point tip over and roll out of the see-saw. It’s lots of fun!
Finally, the section on the left is a nice long straight rail with a 30cm wide ladder at the start. You go up the ladder to 40cm hgih, up a narrow plank to 80cm high, level along a wider plank, down a narrow plank to 40cm high, and finish with a little drop at the end of the next narrow plank.
So what do you think? Any suggestions/additions would be more than welcome. I thought a see-saw (if we can get one) would just be added to the end of one section as well as used as a jump for the bike guys.
On a completely different topic, what happened to that trials park someone was building? I can vaguely remember someone having a place set out to build some trials stuff. It was in an open area and had a fence in the photo I saw. Can anyone tell me who was building it and how it’s going?
Make sure there is enough room for the bike guys to bail from the skinnies without getting hung up on something or landing on the stunt that is next door. The Y intersections are one area where I’d be worried that the bikes might not have enough room to bail. Keep things safe for the riders.
Give the bikes enough room to set up for the real skinny sections. They can’t go from a turn immediatly on to a skinny skinny like a unicycle can.
Good point. The course willl end up having a pretty big bike influence. I think that slight left hand turn onto the narrow plank at the first fork would be doable with some practice. These guys are pretty good.
I’ll also be trying this stuff out on my bike. It should be lots of fun. That’s a mistake I made last year, I didn’t bring my bike along so I missed out on some great northshore bike riding.
Local paper delivery Samuel not Reflex to offices. Like your comment Thanks Samuel. But since you made that point I have to retired on the 2nd day due to an old injury years ago. This does not affect unicycling nor Lawn Mowing also. I had to quit half way through my rounds. So from now on It’s Building Computers for now on.
